Benchmarks

Today is the first ski race of the season for my youngest son. I wish I could be there at Park City watching. Instead I am stuck here in California working. The most important goal in this first race is to finish. Doing so helps with races later in the season.

My job today is running benchmarks. We will be rolling out a new product in the next couple of months and I need to make sure our infrastructure will support it. I am starting the day running speed tests. Later I will work on some reliability tests to make sure we can weather hardware and software failures. These benchmarks are sort of like the ski race my kids are participating in at Park City. The race doesn't really count for much other than to make sure they are in racing form and ready for more important races later in the season.

My daughter was also supposed to be at the race but got in trouble. She hit her brother after being warned repeatedly that it would keep her from this first race. She got home from school a few minutes ago and asked if she could go skiing at the resort near our house. My wife informed her that she was being punished and should work on homework. She knew she wasn't going to be allowed to race, but not being allowed to even ski today is really too much. If she had known that, she would have hit her brother harder. When I heard that, I just had to laugh.